I Live in Kentucky. Now I live in South Central Ky, though I lived close to Clay County for many years. I found the news about Bill Sparkman very disturbing so I called some friends in the area, and also poked around some local community forums and such to see what I could find. I thought I would share my findings.
First of all, NONE of this is official. I don't want to fuel speculation, or spread gossip, or any of that kind of stuff, but I did find out a lot of background kind of stuff that might help us all understand whats going on.
The Office of the State Medical Examiner of Kentucky is doing the autopsy. ASAIK, nothing as been released from that office. I do want to say that State Medical examiner Dr. Emily Craig knows her stuff. She studied with Dr. Bill Bass who headed up the infamous "Body Farm" at the University of Tennessee.
(A side note on decomp- a friend of mine who is a County Coroner said in this temp range (70's 80's and the level of moisture (rain and humidity) decomp would occur very quickly- he mentioned a case of a body going to bone in less than a week in these conditions- which would make time/cause of death very difficult to determine, plus that would most likely be why "cremation would be advised" which was in some of the news reports.)
There is speculation that Mr. Sparkman was shot, off-site, and his body moved, and then suspended from the tree. I have not heard this officially. One story going around was that he was shot accidentally/on purpose by Elk Poachers (apparently, thats a big problem in the DBNF) and the hanging/"FED" was a red herring to throw investigators of track.
He was found by some people from Ohio that had come down for the weekend to visit family in the area, and they went to visit the graveyard were their relatives were buried. This is a tradition in this area. Mr. Sparkman was either in or next to this graveyard. He was found on Sept. 12- but that could have just been coincidence. There is a LOT of talk that the crime scene was manipulated- or staged. There are all kinds of rumors as to how this was done-everything up to and including Satanic Ritual. (I don't think anyone is taking that theory seriously.) One detail that seemed consistent was that the word "FED" was written on some sort of paper and placed on the body.
Mr. Sparkman seemed to be a well loved person- many many people-from both sides of the political spectrum, are saddened and stunned by this loss.
Theres LOTS of speculation as to what happened- some of it is craziness (i.e.the aforementioned Satanic Ritual) but most people believe it was one of two things. First that Mr. Sparkman inadvertently stumbled on someone's Meth Lab. Apparently, a Meth Lab was discovered (and destroyed by LEOs) in this same area back in the Spring. Some folks speculated he could have possibly found someone's Pot Patch- but the overwhelming consensus was that it was Meth. People seem to think that Meth manufacturers are more violent than Pot Growers, and that Pot Growers would not want to call attention to themselves or their crops by a criminal investigation. A Meth lab is mobile whereas a pot patch, of course, isn't. No-one seemed to think it had anything to do with illegal stills. There is not a lot of love here for Meth labs. People don't approve, but kind of turn a blind eye to pot/whiskey. There's a kind of attitude that people do those things to get by, etc etc. Meth Labs- not so much.
The second very disturbing theory was that this was in fact connected with his Census work. Apparently there had been a lot of chatter on a local forum sometime ago- a month maybe? where some folks were talking about the Census people trying to bug people houses and put "tracers" on the houses or people vehicles to track where they are going and monitor conversations. Every person I talked to, left, right, Independent, thought this was nuts,but knew of people who believed this, and it was on some of the local forums-though most of it was "disappeared" by the time I looked it up.
There are a lot of people in this area who are not so fond of the government-but I didn't see a coherent group of them. I didn't find anyone condoning the violence done to this man. People find this crime disturbing, they want the killer(s) brought to justice. Even right-wing Republicans were saying "this is NOT something we condone- this is "wing-nut" activity. Yeah, they used that term. I really want to stress this because there was some ugly talk last night- yes on Daily Kos, about the whole region being backward and violent and several references to "Deliverance" was made. The overwhelming feeling that I got was that if this was indeed politically motivated, then that person was a "crazed wing-nut". I'm not going to say everyone was sweetness and light- there were some disturbing comments-but overwhelmingly people are quite upset about this.
The FBI is investigating the case. Couple of points here- There is a FBI regional office in London, Ky, close to where this crime took place. DBNF is (mostly) Federal property, and Mr. Sparkman was a Federal employee so its not unusual that the FBI would be called in. I heard the DBNF was "crawling with Feds" Some people said ATF and the Secret Service has been called in- I didn't heard anything close to that from an official. One note- "FED" can mean FBI, ATF, DEA , Secret Service,Park Service, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and yeah, even census workers. Curiously, most people seemed to be optimistic about the FBI/KSP catching who did this. There were one or two who said- "Oh the killers will disappear into the DBNF and never be found", but most people seemed to have faith that the killers would be caught.
One more thing- This was reported locally right after Mr. Sparkman's body was found. There have been oh, two or three murders in this area in the last six-months, year or so-none of those made it to the National News. Arrests were made in two of those but I can't find anything about the third-it seems to have drifted in from legend-land. The FBI is being tight-lipped about this-but they always are. I have a friend who is an agent and he would not tell me where we were going for dinner. I think thats just how they roll- I don't see any "government" hush-up here.
One final thing. I want to extend my most sincere condolences to the friends and family of Mr. Bill Sparkman. I hope and pray his killers are caught and brought to swift justice.